Optical Properties of Donor-Bound Excitons in Vacancy-Engineered Colloidal Nanocrystals

The controlled insertion of electronic states within the band gap of semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs) is a powerful tool which enables to engineer their physical properties. One compelling example is represented by metal chalcogenide NCs incorporating heterovalent p-type impurities such as d10 coinage metals (Cu+, Ag+, or Au+). In this type of nanostructures the interplay between the dopant and the host semiconductor energy levels leads in the ultra-fast capture of the hole by the localized state of the dopant leading to the so-called "acceptor-bound" excitons. The control of this paradigm unlocked technologically relevant functionalities, such as Stokes-shift between the emission and the absorptionspectra, extended luminescence lifetimes, photomagnetic behaviors, and enhanced electrical transport. To date, although conceptually analogous to hole-management schemes, the opposite "donor-bound" exciton scheme using aliovalent elements adopted to n-doped NCs (e.g., Al3+ and In3+ in) has not been realized due to the natural propensity of such cations to produce shallow donor states that inject electrons directly in the CB. Here, we exploit the propensity of metal sulfides to present sulfur vacancies (VS) that introduce a localized level pinned about 1 eV below the CB to produce a model system for "donor-bound" excitons in CdSeS NCs. The investigation of the optical and magneto-optical properties of these NCs revealed that the VS state is responsible for the ultrafast capture of electron in the CB which can then either decay non-radiatively or recombine with the VB photohole leading to long-lived, Stokes-shifted emission with size-tunable energy. Moreover, VS-localized electrons are almost unaffected by trapping, and suppression of thermal quenching boosts the emission efficiency to 85%. Magneto-optical measurements indicate that the VS are not magnetically coupled to the NC bands and that the polarization properties are determined by the spin of the valence-band photo-hole, whose spin flip is massively slowed down due to suppressed exchange interaction with the donor localized electron.